The fort was not precisely rectangular. One wall was curved, and a second one had an indentation like it’d been built around something, but he couldn’t see what that might’ve been. And in the center of this ungeometric, courtyard-style space, two dirigibles were docked. Neither one looked like it belonged to any official nation, army, or custom, which told Rector that they were pirate ships. Both were fixed to a totem pole that must’ve been carved from a tree bigger than any he’d ever laid eyes on. Pieces of the pole were rotting off, dissolving to squishy mulch around the edges, but enough of the impressive log remained intact to keep the two airships bobbing gently a few feet off the earth.

Houjin saw him observing the operation, and said, “That pole won’t last, but it doesn’t have to. See?” He pointed at the nearest corner, where a great knot of right angles took shape through the fog. “Pipework docks, almost finished.”

“Almost,” said someone behind them.

Rector swiveled with surprise, but Houjin just bobbed his head to acknowledge the newcomer. Without looking, he said, “That’s Kirby Troost. He’s the Naamah Darling’s engineer.” Then he turned to Troost and asked, “Is Zeke up here?”

“Yeah, he’s over by the Chinatown entrance.”

Rector and Kirby Troost sized up one another from a cautious distance. Troost was a smallish man, shorter than Rector by several inches, and he was wearing a mask, so there wasn’t much else to be said about him. But there was a posture to him, a forced casualness that Rector recognized and immediately mistrusted. He knew that posture, and often wore it himself. It was the posture of someone who’s up to something.

Troost said, “You must be the kid who went down the chuckhole.”

“That’s me.”

Neither one of them moved, or even blinked.

Houjin looked back and forth between them, sensing that something was afoot and he wasn’t a part of it. Rector could’ve told him, if he’d had the vocabulary to do so, that this is what happens when two shysters recognize each other.

But he didn’t have the words, and couldn’t have explained it even though he knew it somewhere deep in his core. So rather than bring it up, he said to Houjin, “Let’s go find Zeke, huh?”

“See you later, Troost!” Houjin declared over his shoulder, for he’d already taken off toward the corner the engineer had indicated.

Troost and Rector exchanged a wary nod, then Rector stepped back into Houjin’s familiar wake.